The 2014 Trading Technology 40: Brenda Hoffman

Leads tend to be fleeting in the low-latency arms race, but
Brenda Hoffman is taking time to savor a
victory lap. Last year TMX Group, the Canadian exchange company
where she is head of IT, delivered its record-slashing new
trading engine, TMX Quantum XA, reducing trade times from 2,000
microseconds to 25  well below the prevailing industry
standard of about 300. We believe we are the fastest on
the planet, boasts Hoffman, 49, who joined TMXs
flagship, the Toronto Stock Exchange, in 2001 after stints at
global exchanges for Canadian consulting firm TIL Systems and
IBM Global Services. To get up to Quantum XAs speed,
executing brokerages, such as Getco (now part of KCG Holdings) and Tradebot
Systems, had to recertify to our new API [application
programming interface], notes Hoffman, adding that her
technology team is really pumped. Quantum XA went
live on the TMX Select alternative trading system last August,
and it will roll out on the Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture
Exchange and Alpha Trading Systems later this year. In October,
TMX Atrium, the infrastructure provider known as Atrium Network
before TMX acquired it in 2011, announced a link to the Moscow
Exchange. Regardless of where you are in the world, if
you want TMX or Nasdaq, you can just plug into a local network
and bounce around the globe, getting data from other
exchanges, explains Hoffman.

An allocation to international bonds exposes Target Retirement Fund investors to an asset class thats not only influenced by different interest rate and inflation dynamics than U.S. bonds, but which also provides a larger opportunity set of credits.